Monday December 16, 2024
Sierra Club —
Long before the creation of the city of Oakland, salmon were spawning. Their journey would likely have taken them from the freshwater creeks they were born in out to the Pacific Ocean to mature and back again to reproduce, struggling up a wide channel into what was formerly a large saltwater lagoon. Each would have tried to swim through the lagoon and into the creeks above to spawn as their bodies slowly decayed. But since development cut off access to that lagoon’s creeks over a century ago, narrowed the entrance to the lagoon itself, and converted it into what is now known as Lake Merritt, the salmon have stopped coming back.
In his 10-year tenure as executive director of the nonprofit Lake Merritt Institute, James Robinson had only seen a salmon in the lake once. So when he first heard reports of a Chinook spotted in the waters in November, he was doubtful at first.
“Many times we have people say they witness salmon in the lake,” he said, “and it’s actually a striped bass or some other fish.” However, the following day members of the Lake Merritt Institute found bodies of several Chinook salmon washed up on the lake’s shore.
The discovery was bittersweet to Robinson. The salmons’ death in the brackish lake suggests that they didn’t get to spawn, as only salmon who make it to freshwater can reproduce. However, death is a natural part of the reproductive cycle of Chinook salmon: all adults who return to freshwater die soon after. To Robinson, seeing their remains in the lake was a sign of what could be.